I shoot you good!(Gears of War-PC)

[Mr Bean]

So I recently acquired Gears of War(Gamestop 4.99$) for the PC and after my last upgrade(Dead MB) my PC meets the games Recommended requirements. And now that I've started to play it(Post DRM away patch) I have one serious question.

So.. how exactly is this game's combat fun?
Sure it's pretty, and moving from cover to cover is nice the levels have looked interesting so far... but why exactly does each and every Locust require an entire clip to put down? I've not even reached the later enemies in the game but it feels like every grub I shoot down requires as many shots as you average Halo-verse Hunters or Half-Life 2 Poison Zombie. Each single little enemy I gun down seems to take forever to kill.

Is it the difficultly that gave them tons of hitpoints? (I'm playing Hardcore ATM) or is the entire game like this, one clip per enemy all the way through the game.

[General Zod]

Are you trying to go for headshots, or just straight to the body? I never seemed to have a hard time killing grubs except for Boomers, so it might just be your difficulty or the weapons you're using, or a combination.

[Ford Prefect]

It's almost certainly the difficulty. You need to master the active reload to maximise your killing power and conserve ammunition.

[Mr Bean]

It's almost certainly the difficulty. You need to master the active reload to maximise your killing power and conserve ammunition.

How much of a difference does the reload damage bonus make? Is it 1.5 damage, double damage or something along those lines?

Are you trying to go for headshots, or just straight to the body? I never seemed to have a hard time killing grubs except for Boomers, so it might just be your difficulty or the weapons you're using, or a combination.

I went for headshots after seeing a full clip go into a grub with no seeming effect. In the interest of testing I'm going to get some solid numbers on number of bullets to the head required.

[Stark]

The active bonus in Gears1 is negligible; I believe it's 10%. Another thing that's better in Gears2.

EDIT oh the hilarity.

[Ford Prefect]

How much of a difference does the reload damage bonus make? Is it 1.5 damage, double damage or something along those lines?

Like Stark says, it's pretty insignificant, though you can take out a Drone with two or three shots of your sidearm if you get a perfect reload and hit them in the head. It's a lot better in Gears2, which is useless to you, of course. In any case, I would still suggest you master it. Not only does it reload faster, any additional damage is worth it.

[Stark]

The fact remains that if he doesn't dig they playstyle of killing a bunch if super-tough grubs he's not going to dig the game, same way as it's useless if you don't like infantry battalion closets in CoD4.

[Ford Prefect]

The fact remains that if he doesn't dig they playstyle of killing a bunch if super-tough grubs he's not going to dig the game

Oh yeah, fair point. The drones are pretty tough for videogame enemies (unless you're playing on casual). Some sequences really rely on how tough the Locust are in general in order to create tension. So if you prefer speedy headshot instant kill fests then you probably won't enjoy Gears.

[Andrew_Fireborn]

It's been a good while since I played the original Gears. I just remember the difficulties went something like 'Easy,' 'medium,' 'face-brick.'

The locust are rather durable from the middle difficulty on. I'd attribute it to them basically being the -only- enemy. The other life forms are more like mini-bosses, when they appear you're usually given the tools to take them on. Spoiler

I don't recall how many Reavers you kill in Gears 1 that aren't in the final level... but I don't think there were more than a half dozen, if even that many. Seeders are a joke... Berserkers show up twice. And the Brumak is only in one cutscene.

Easily 80% of the games enemies are standard grubs. The rest is primarily composed of Boomers, who're ass holes anyway you slice it. (I think you can just -barely- survive a direct hit from the Boomshot on easy, while on medium and higher it can instakill you from splash alone...)



Heh, RAAM is a PITA on the highest difficulty. Amuses me that Skorge was supposed to be worse than him when his fights were, if anything, easier than the stages they were in...

[Ford Prefect]

Easily 80% of the games enemies are standard grubs. The rest is primarily composed of Boomers

There is a pretty high number of Theron Guards that show up towards the later third of the game. They appear more frequently than Boomers do, and are harder to kill by virtue of the fact that they are not very large, slow targets begging to get longshotted in the face, take cover and still have more health than the average Drone. Also my experience with enemies using Torque Bows is that they are fucking broken.

[Stark]

It's worth noting that Gears2 also gives more feedback to fire; grubs will stumble, fall, recoil etc so it's not Gears1 style 'walk unscathed through fire without even reacting'.

[Andrew_Fireborn]

Heh, can't say I ever had that hard a time with Therons myself. Though yeah, the Torque bow is really powerful in their hands.

Though it does have the long wind up time, during which they tend to stand perfectly still, and do beg to be shot with a head burster. Then again, I used the long shot waaaaaay too much in campaign.

[Oskuro]

Spoiler

And the Brumak is only in one cutscene.

Oh no he isn't, the PC version gets a new level where you have to fight it. On foot.

My personal recomendation, since you have the power of mouse aiming, is to get a hold of the sniper rifle and make those headshots count, I played most of the game with the shotgun and the sniper, not even bothering to get the crossbow.

If you like the cover mechanics, but would like less durable enemies and bit of a faster pace, maybe you could try both Rainbow 6 Vegas games. GoW is pretty short, and relies heavily on tough fights to increase play time.

[Stark]

Vegas1 is really short too though, and I think the durability is WAY too far the other way. Then again, the slower pace of 'cover shooters' means you either get headshot-fests like Vegas or dakka dakka conveyors level Gears.

[Mr Bean]

Well I have my answer or close enough 38 bullets

Youtube
First off Youtube kicked the crap out of the video compression wise but as you can see I start with 190 rounds in the Lancer and end up with 152 rounds left for 38 bullets fired. And my AI squadmates were shooting at it. I did not get 38 head shots but I count a good twenty bullets going right into the head.

If they are higher damage weapons I look for them. Sniper rifle and shot-gun eh? For lack of a better comparison I compare Gears to Quake IV(And it's oh so useful Assault Rifle) where enemies soak up damage but it's a run and gun afar. Sure it's not a Call of Duty(One shot kill but hordes of enemies) it's almost... Mass Effecty? In amount of enemies and how durable they are? Except there's no magic to one-shot these guys you have to kill each and every one of them.

Well I'll try it on the lower difficultly in hopes I only need to shoot each enemy ten times in the head before they die.

[Oskuro]

Actually I carry the shotgun so I don't need to aim when fighting wretches. But, to be honest, I played on hard, not on "I hate myself" mode.

Also, a detail that might interest someone, if you kill the final boss via headshot, you actually see the gapin hole on his skull.

As for R6V being too short, I'm actually playing both at the same time... Wich makes for a decent game with paralel story-lines.

[Stark]

The shotgun in Gears1 is really flakey - at close range it's often a 1-hit vapourise, but just often enough it isn't (and they don't even stumble) to be really annoying.

This is an issue that Epic took notice of, though; in Gears2 perfect reloads give 'bonuses' or perks(sniper gets extra headshot damage etc), the hammerburst is changed to a semi-auto battle rifle and the bad guys react to fire WAY more. I can't play Gears1 for reasons like this anymore (and the lack of NPC resurrections).

[CaptHawkeye]

Gears is an action game so I understand its stance on damage modeling. IE: I just took 4 rounds to the chest from a Hammerburst THAT ALL YOU GOT?! Gears is a close-in fast paced arcade shooter and a realistic damage model wouldn't fly with the game at all. Now if combat in GoW regularly took place at ranges of say, 200-300 meters then one-hit damage would make more sense. I guess what i'm trying to say here is that hit points are generally a function of average fight distance in the game.

As an aside, trying to have a realistic damage model but combat at really short range is often what leads to things like forced weapon balancing. It turns out gamers are really insecure about their aim and don't want to miss EVER.

[Vendetta]

The lancer is shit for shooting in Gears 1. It's like poking them gently with feathers. It's not a gun with a chainsaw on the front, it's a chainsaw with a hilarious gun attachment.

[Havok]

Honestly, if you don't like putting loads of mags into badguys, then either turn the difficulty down, get a sniper and learn to head shot, or just don't play. That is just the way the game is.

It's funny that people usually complain about bad guys being too easy, then they make a game where the bad guys are as hard to kill as you are, and people complain. LOL

And a lot of the "fun" associated with Gears is in the multiplayer.

[Stark]

Yeah, like I said it's one of those things; you can't make someone like badguys with 1000 hitpoints, and if it bothers him he's got to stick to 1hit kills or find another game.

[defanatic]

It's funny that people usually complain about bad guys being too easy, then they make a game where the bad guys are as hard to kill as you are, and people complain. LOL

It's probably not the same people, and TBH it feels like a bit of a cop-out or 'fake difficulty'.
"This game feels a little easy."
"Oh, that's ok. We'll give the bad guys more health. How about that, eh?"

[General Zod]

It's funny that people usually complain about bad guys being too easy, then they make a game where the bad guys are as hard to kill as you are, and people complain. LOL

It's probably not the same people, and TBH it feels like a bit of a cop-out or 'fake difficulty'.
"This game feels a little easy."
"Oh, that's ok. We'll give the bad guys more health. How about that, eh?"

Then how do you define "real difficuty"? If the bad guys are harder to kill, then for all intents and purposes it is more difficult.

[Mr Bean]

Then how do you define "real difficuty"? If the bad guys are harder to kill, then for all intents and purposes it is more difficult.

It falls under the "bad difficulty" model.
There are tons of things you can do to make things harder in the "hard" difficultly you could for example.

Make enemies more numerous(uncommon)
Make enemies tougher(common)
Make enemies more accurate(common)
Make enemies smarter(Rare)
Make heath or ammo less available(common)
Weaken player damage(Uncommon)
Weaken player heath(common)
Computer cheats(RTS/Racers)

That's the most common I can think off of hand. The Make enemies smarter is a good way to make things harder without appearing cheap but when you combine several things together it can come off as cheap. The Halo Legendary difficultly I think is one of the better "hard" modes as it only strengths enemies a tad it mearly makes the enemy more numerous and better armed and the Player has about as much heath and shields as the average Elite he's mowing down wave after wave.

Medal of Honor's and Call of Duty "realistic mode" the hardest mode is an exercise in frustration combining Ultra accurate enemies with tons more enemies and two shot player deaths.

Trying that mode out your keep your average WWII standard of "two hundred kills per section" game play and add in the fact you die as easy as the hordes of enemies your mowing down which means it's not harder, it means you must be perfect and memories the EXACT route needed to get through every level as one misstep will spell your doom.

In short Realism mode plus "One man gunning down two full panzer-divisions by himself" do not gell.

[Vanas]

Wait, wait, wait.

There are cudgels in Gears that fire bullets? When myself and a co-op buddy were going through it, it was essentially a melée-fest interspersed with the occasional blessed round or two of magnum fire splitting heads